Sarah Reed girls basketball withdraws from competition for season

The Sarah Reed girls basketball team has officially withdrawn from competition for the 2012-2013 season. Reed Athletic Director Joseph Arnold confirmed that the reason was lack of participation.

Reed began the season 1-16 in a tough District 9-4A that includes Helen Cox and McDonogh 35 (the respective No. 8 and No. 11 seeds in the current Class 4A playoffs), and while the team wasn’t playoff-bound to begin with, the withdrawal will affect the program significantly over the next two years.

Most prominently, LHSAA rules dictate that any school voluntarily discontinuing its basketball program shall be removed from district play and made ineligible for competing for a district title in that sport for two calendar years from the date of discontinuance.

Thus, Reed will not be able to re-join District 9-4A girls basketball for a full season again until 2015-2016.

Schools from District 9-4A can still schedule games against Reed during the next two seasons, but they will not qualify as district games or count toward district standings.

Arnold said he wasn’t yet sure whether Reed would in fact field a girls basketball team during the next few years, but that he hoped the program could at least continue at the JV level.

LHSAA Director Kenny Henderson said the school will not be fined or placed on probation. The punishment for withdrawal is simply for the program to miss out on district competition for the required period.

“There is no penalty per se,” Henderson said. “The withdrawal has a consequence that is put into play to protect the schools that Reed was scheduled to play. Those teams lost games that could not be made up.”

Reed bowed out of games against J.S. Clark, Lake Area New Tech Early College, Lusher, Landry and De La Salle.

Of those schools, only Class 3A De La Salle made the playoffs in its class and was thus unable to compete for meaningful power points in a game against Reed. De La Salle earned a No. 15 seed in their bracket, but was bounced from the first round of the Class 3A playoffs by Northwest on Monday.

The LHSAA considers any school that voluntarily forfeits more than two games in the sports of basketball, baseball, football, soccer, softball or volleyball to be technically dropping the sport and thus subject to penalty.

The athletic penalty is the second of the school year incurred by Reed. In the fall, the school was forced to forfeit three football wins, was fined $1,200 and placed on administrative probation for a period of one year after an LHSAA investigation revealed that three scholastically ineligible students were on the roster.